Gees Louise! (Where's The Applause? Book 2)

Everyone has heard, "After years of therapy...." but what exactly happens in those sessions? How does a therapist guide a person to understand baffling emotions, jettison bad behavior, and recover from a painful past? Gees Louise explores the process in inspiring detail. Louise Burnham, a single mother in her mid-twenties, has gone from a fully-functional, hardworking employee of the county juvenile system to a sleep-deprived shell of a person she barely recognizes, able to do little more than care for her young son. She knows that without help, she will fall into the darkness of her abusive past and lose touch with reality. After several visits to the emergency room with debilitating panic attacks, Louise, who had never before asked for help in her life for anything, finally calls a therapist. "Can you help me?" she asks the voice on the phone. "Yes," the counselor answered, "I can." There begins the relationship between Louise and her therapist, a woman Louise calls Brauma, a mix of her real name and "Mama." Under Dr. Brauma's gentle, persistent guidance, Louise reluctantly and at first belligerently reveals her severely difficult childhood. The two eventually reconfigure its effects to reveal Louise's true spirit. Their relationship reminiscent in some ways of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, Dr. Brauma shows Louise how she can separate the past from the present, the memories from the choices, and the all-consuming rage from justified feelings of betrayal, sadness, or anger.  Each chapter is a self-contained vignette of self-discovery, yet the story as a whole comes together to reveal the transformative power of therapy with the right alchemy of doctor and patient.



- Jane Dodge